The only question is WHY DO THEY GO ON RECORD with the bullshit denials?

It is a calculated risk, and maybe out of habit.

Somewhere along the chain of command, though, the denials do become true. A good underling knows when to grant his masters the ultimate in plausible deniability by simply not filling them in on certain matters.

I'm guessing it's because they honestly believe what they are doing is necessary to keep America safe. To the point that they think lying to the people who are supposed to be overseeing them is necessary for the greater good.

Which is terrifying. Give me all the cynical, greedy, lying, corrupt asshole politicians you want. Just please, don't put zealots in power.

Anyone who falls into that belief might as well be written off and put up against the wall, second in line to the people who believe that their own possession of arbitrary power is the only way to ensure the nation's safety. They can go first.

Probably also because they had a vew "backroom" visits by the NSA who explained quite clearly that revealing or admitting to this sort of behavior will quickly get them thrown into a federal PMITA prison instead of a cushy white-collar prison. How many "hackers" have been "accidentally" put into a "real" prison who end up getting beaten nearly to death and viciously raped because they pissed off a particularly vindictive DA? (I can remember at least one. And there only needs to be one...)

I'm guessing it's because they honestly believe what they are doing is necessary to keep America safe.

This is like the banks and sub-prime lenders "honestly believing" that house prices would go up forever and money would always be cheap.

Read my lips: Everyone involved knew exactly what was going on.

Everyone inside the NSA with so much as a high school Diploma, when encountering even a low level program, knew that it was fundamentally wrong, probably illegal, and corrosive to the civic society. You don't even need to know what civic society is to know that tapping and permanently recording all calls in the US is both dangerous and wrong.

The on the record denials are effectively the NSA aping of the likes of John Corzine's claims of "We have no idea where the money is", despite being the man who took it right out of customers accounts. I dwell on the financial crisis because the breakdown in the rule of law, propriety, common sense, and all morality there is a mirror image and ultimately a fore-runner of the excesses and lies we now see in the NSA.

All that Keeping America Safe is BS. This is all about budgets, contracts, staffing levels, prestige and power seeking on the part of an entire city block of executives, officers, and IT workers throughout the NSA. The purpose of the NSA is to procure BMWs and range rovers for its management, and for favored private contractors and sub-contractors. That is why the price of a incorporated city is being spent on all these ludicrously overblown surveillance programs.

Forget the lies. Follow the money. Men will do anything, say anything, to anyone to keep such a gravy train flowing.

| The only question is WHY DO THEY GO ON RECORD with the bullshit denials?

Because they'd be put in federal prison---no parole system, extremely long sentences---if they don't. This is not an exaggeration, they were obviously forced to agree to certain national security requirements, and this is what they mean.

The USA is slightly kinder than the equivalent in China or Russia (and there's no doubt they do just as much, but no defectors)---you'd get a multiple-gunshot suicide and polonium in your tea.

I can only hope that this sort of bullshit maneuver by RSA reflects both globally and in the USA with respect to sales. Name one Government willing to buy this equipment any longer? 10 M compared to what they're going to lose now is nothing.

When the acts of the NSA first came to light as we now know them, there was outrage not just from the tech sector, but from the general population as well. As these stories continue coming at a steady and regular pace, I still see outrage over the infringement of our rights - and the understanding of the general slippery slope creepiness of it - from those technically inclined. But less and less are the major outlets making a fuss, and even when the general population catches wind of each new story it is increasingly met with a sarcastic, "Gee, didn't see that coming." and a shrug of the shoulders. Is the possibility of a tipping point in favor of our rights being eliminated be the increasing apathy of the greater people toward these issues? I suspect we are on the losing side. I suspect that as the stories come out, and people in general not only become desensitized - but worse, it becomes the norm. In becoming the norm it will balloon to scales and scopes unimaginable. I feel we will reach a point where the majority of people will have forgotten that it was ever any other way. Even as it continues to get worse, they will continue to forget.

It is unfortunate that the popular media does what it does these days and ignores "boring" news in their chase to find the next hot story. Still, this is an election year and the Snowden revelations will likely come back to the foreground as candidates pander for votes, especially with the GOP fractured, having no real consensus on how to sell themselves.

"...Depression, strife, riots, murder, all this dread. We're irresistibly drawn to that almost orgiastic state created out of death and destruction. It's in all of us. We revel in it. Sure, the media tries to put a sad face on these things, painting them up as great human tragedies. But we all know the function of the media has never been to eliminate the evils of the world, no. Their job is to persuade us to accept those evils and get used to living with them. The powers that be want us to be passive obser

Government organizations like the NSA are playing a long game. If one generation is desensitized, the next will be uncaring as long as basic needs and a sense of freedom are preserved.

They are winning, and even if we form long-lived organizations to fight them on their terms they will undermine until those organizations are publicly ridiculed and useless. Individuals who speak up will be tarred as "activists", "protestors", and later "traitors". They have the upper hand and there's no way to get it back without an actual war, which no one wants.

The only way to win is to not play the game. Unfortunately most people won't stop playing the game. They won't stop using the internet and won't stop using credit/debit cards. I am slowly weaning myself off the internet. At this point I use the internet around 90% less than before the Snowden revelations. I can't seem to give up that last 10% (which includes).

I agree. I wonder, yet also dare not wonder, what will become of those of us (a lot of people here) who will never be able to stop seeing the forest through the trees. Complacency from fear? Revolutionaries? Found out by technology that can spot us and executed? Perhaps all three where option two may be impossible.

They're winning too. My family doesn't fly anywhere. We don't have passports. We don't visit places like Hawaii, Disneyland, Mexico, etc... All the places that other people take their families to for vacations... We only visit places in Canada (where we live) because there's plenty to see and do here without leaving the country... We've told our son why we've made this conscious decision... But our friends believe we're being unnecessarily cruel and inhumane by denying our son the experience of going to

This seems to be the attitude of the Roman government for a couple hundred years before the complete collapse of their nation. Then they started thinking that little things like the basic needs of the majority didn't really matter so much, and there was a revolution. America has gotten there a lot faster than Rome did. Maybe they will get to the next couple steps faster, too.

You could write a series of books on why this occurs but in a nutshell it comes down to this:

What are you (we) going to do about it?

Sure "we" could all get together an elect people to "fix" things. That will never happen. Your special interest isn't the most important thing to everyone and most people vote based on a few select issues. Making sure this issue is everyone's core issue is impossible. Gay rights, women rights, abortion, religion, gun rights, taxes, welfare, etc are generally more important t

You should decide on the solution then agitate for it. For example, one might say Proportional Representation is a solution, as it permits for a broader spectrum of parties/mandates/issues to be represented. (This is my opinion having voted in UK for ~ 4 elections).

The idea of Greenwald was to trickle the stories out so they last years and he can get the most attention for his career. That started with 3-6 months of lies, where poorly written and misleading training PDFs were paraded out before they even started to trickle the documents talking about actual programs. Of course that reduced the effectiveness of the leaks to inform the public. That is a no-brainer.

It won't "become" the norm, it is the norm, and it already was the norm.

Reeasing things in dribs and drabs has benefits, though. It probably keeps the public's interest more than releasing the whole thing as a lump; even if public interest is down because of exhaustion, it's probably not as far down as it would be if nothing had been released in a year.

The other reason is that it makes it harder for the government to lie. If you release a document, the government can't lie and deny it because they don't know that maybe tomorrow you'll release a document that could expose the lie. If you release the whole thing in a lump, they could just carefully tailor the lie to match the existing releases.

If public interest is down by the time the real programs get talked about, that is a recipe for people NOT ever knowing even what is going on. If you measure "public interest" by newspapers sold, sure it sells more papers. But if instead you were to take polls of how well the public understands what is happening, then no. Telling people the truth during the initial period of interest is what would do that.

If people are already "exhausted" with the subject by the time the truth even comes out, they not only

That was the long issue of tension between the NSA and GCHQ. The UK wanted it all kept very much out anything public: no books, no news, no helping sealed courts and no scientific review.
The NSA seems to have more of a story to share to ensure standing and funding in the USA - they needed winning press to out flank other aspects of the US mil and gov getting material to political leaders.
The UK saw great harm in hinting at a global domestic and international surveillance networks - i.e. seamless track

Open-source doesn't help for shit in this situation. Dual_EC_DRBG was an open standard, all the details were public. The problem is that, with cryptographic algorithms, only a handful of people in the entire world are qualified to say whether something might or might not be secure. And even if there is a problem, it might go for years without being found.

For what it is worth, people who know the math thought Dual_EC_DRGB smelled funny from the first time it was announced, although it was impossible to prove if it was actually compromised or not. Combined with the fact that it's much slower than its competitors (and low speed is not a virtue in a RNG like it is in a crypto alg) and you have something that was only used by people who were explicitly told to use it.

FYI, low speed isn't a virtue in a crypto algorithm, either. This is true whether by "crypto algorithm" you mean "cipher" or "secure hash". Really, the only context in which poor performance is a virtue is password hashing, and you can always make a slow hash out of a fast one by iterating it.

So those that know how, can test and verify open-source alternatives are cryptographically secure, not back-doored, and safe for people to use.

Simple question. Since I don't know or trust any of those people doing the evaluation of the open source alternatives, exactly how do you propose I trust that they are not back-doored as well? It's not a trivial question. I am not a software developer nor am I a cryptography expert. No one I know fits both categories either. Open source stuff could be absolutely riddled with holes and I'd have really no way to know. Even if numerous parties declare it safe, how can I be certain the compiled copy hasn'

I think this is the basis of Snowden's disagreement with the NSA -- the NSA could have taken a defensive mode and worked to make the country and its people more secure but it instead took an offensive mode and made crypto-weaker and found software bugs and used them to break in rather than working to have them fixed. The long term effect if this choice is a less secure country and a country with a shit reputation.

-- snip from reuters story --.. Information Assurance Directorate, and an outside expert named Eric Rescorla.

Rescorla, who has advocated greater encryption of all Web traffic, works for Mozilla, maker of the Firefox web browser. He and Mozilla declined to comment. Salter did not respond to requests for comment.-- snip --

RSA are little more than a government puppet. If you are serious about security, avoid their products.

"RSA, now owned by EMC Corp, did not dispute the research when contacted by Reuters for comment. The company said it had not intentionally weakened security on any product and noted that Extended Random did not prove popular and had been removed from RSA's protection software in the last six months."

I think people are being blinded a bit by the dual_EC_DRBG issue. It makes people think the other 3 DRBG algorithms in SP800-90A are OK.

However if your system implements FIPS140-2 compliance, there's another hole which affects all RNGs within the FIPS boundary. Please read section 4.9.2 of FIPS140-2. You will see this. I call it the FIPS entropy destroyer...

"1. If each call to a RNG produces blocks of n bits (where n > 15), the first n-bit block generatedafter power-up, initialization, or reset shall not be used, but shall be saved for comparison withthe next n-bit block to be generated. Each subsequent generation of an n-bit block shall becompared with the previously generated block. The test shall fail if any two compared n-bitblocks are equal. "

This will eliminate all adjacent pairs, which would otherwise appear with a frequency dictated by the binomial distribution derived from the bit width of the output and for a 16 bit source, is trivially distinguishable from random with less that 1MByte of output data.

For the record, RdRand doesn't do this because I refused to put it in because it's a back door in the spec.

Take the upper 32 bits. There are 2^16 values where the upper half==the lower half. For each of those 2^16 values, there are 2^96 values removed from the 2^128 bit number space (I.E. all the combinations of the lower 96 bits with the upper 32 where the halves match). So that's 2^(16+96). So the size of the output space is reduced to 2^128 - 2^112.

Then slide right 16 bits and repeat. Subtract another 2^112, but elimi

As an upper limit, assume that you remove 100*2^112. But that will still only eliminate 100/65536=0.1% of the search space. Any key that is brute-forceable by NSA with those 0.1% removed is also brute-forceable without those 0.1% of the search space removed.

> What may be worse (I don't know) is the simultaneous equations that it creates that are invariant for keys from such a source. May

I've got a proper crypto mathematician helping me on this. If there's a concrete finding it'll be published, but for now, it's more than enough to want to steer clear of it from a cryptographic perspective.

>Wait what - you designed Intel's RdRand hardware RNG?Me and many others. I was the primary designer of the crypto processing hardware which intersects with these specs. My public comments on the specs are here [nist.gov].

>So, since there is a lot of paranoia about backdoors in that, is there a backdoor?:PNo. I say that as a personal statement. I don't speak for my employer in public forums.

I'm in it to improve security of users from all comers. Good RNGs are a prerequisite for good security and in my design

Me and many others. I was the primary designer of the crypto processing hardware which intersects with these specs. My public comments on the specs are here.

And how do you know the NSA's influence didn't simply steamroll over all your professional objections and put the flawed standard in the chips anyway? The NSA has social as well as technological backdoors.

>And how do you know the NSA's influence didn't simply steamroll over all your professional objections and put the flawed standard in the chips anyway? The NSA has social as well as technological backdoors.

There are publicly published and peer reviewed mathematical proofs that the extraction algorithm (AES-CBC-MAC) and the PRNG algorithm (AES-CTR-DRBG) are secure outside of the NIST specs.

I have also done things to work around all the questionable aspects of the SP800-90 spec. E.G. Massive over reseedin

Let's take it as read that you are indeed a (possibly former) Intel employee who worked on RDRAND. Given the black box nature of the RNG and the fact that some time ago someone posted anonymously to Slashdot claiming that a small number of chips were jinxed so that RDRAND was predictable, do you know of a good way to rebuild confidence in the integrity of a particular chips RNG?

More generally, do you have any interesting thoughts on the topic of b

>Let's take it as read that you are indeed a (possibly former) Intel employee who worked on RDRAND.You may, but I should really stick to bitching about the spec rather than things concerning my employer.

I'm working on persuading NIST and X9.82 to write the specs such that a conformant implementation could expose internal state (like the raw entropy) without violating FIPS140-2 which has all sort of restrictions on that sort of thing. This also has to be done right so that it would make sense in a CPU. Th

While it's entirely possible to create trustworthy hardware, I don't know how it's possible to convey the trustworthiness. What you can do, which is probably as good as can be done, is to create things such that individually subverted instances of the hardware could be trivially distinguished from the standard issue hardware.

The 16 is just a lower limit. Almost every cryptographic RNG has a block size much, much larger so it's no big deal. Many applications rely on the fact that you will not get two blocks from an RNG that are the same so it seems like a good test to me.

>The 16 is just a lower limit. Almost every cryptographic RNG has a block size much, much larger so it's no big deal.

But it asks for the test to be made at the output. The block size might be 128 or 256 bits, but the output is often less. E.G. RdRand has a block size of 16, 32 or 64 bits. So if you built a FIPS140-2 compliant software stack and didn't want to fight with the certification house and so implemented 4.9.2, it would fail easily at 16 bits and fairly easily at 32 bits.

No, the text you quoted asks for the test to be made at n-bit block generation, not output. And I'd say for n greater than, say, 40, any incidence of consecutive identical blocks indicates, with very high probability, that the RNG is broken. I do think the clause is odd, though, and can't think of any good reason to have it in there.

The 'block generation' term is not very well defined in SP800-90A, B, C or FIPS140-2. It could be interpreted as the output size of the drbg at the SP800-90 boundary or an internal service boundary or the FIPS140 boundary.

Either way, FIPS 4.9.2 introduced algorithmic invariants that reduces the entropy. Depending on the model you choose, it could increase episilon in the full entropy source definition in SP800-90 to above 1 in 2^64, thus breaking SP800-90.

I dunno. I agree it reduces entropy by eliminating adjacent pairs, but the frequency of sequential 16+ bit random numbers being identical is 1/65536. 0.0015% or less. You're losing just a tiny bit of entropy.

OTOH if the RNG breaks for whatever reason and keeps returning the same value, then throwing away identical sequential results would prevent the broken values from passing into the algorithm. It sounds to me more like this is a safeguard against the RNG crapping out, or attack vectors where the R

My company had a security policy that required iPhones to have PINs that met certain conditions, such as: no repeated digits, no consecutive digits can be an increment or decrement by one. The goal was to prevent people from picking 1111, 1234, etc. These rules were so restrictive that what they really did was reduce the number of potential PINs by about 33%.

Research on leaked PINs (at least here in America) has shown that over 50% of user-selected 4 digit PINs follow the pattern of dates, with the first

Yes. This is a fairly general problem. People think they can identify 'bad' random from 'good' random sequences, whereas in reality all random sequences are equally likely.

Testing random data is really a case of separating all the sequences into two sets - the bad and the good. The trick is to make the bad set match to well understood error modes of the source, otherwise it's a waste of time and detrimental to the security. You are trying to detect bad random data. You can't. You are trying to identify a ba

But it gives you a set of algebraic equations you can use to attack a key composed of multiple of these values.key[31:16] != key[15:0]key[47:32] != key[31:16]key[63:48] != key[47:32]...key[127:112] != key[111:96]

Imagine all the ways you could use these equations to attack they key schedule in a block cipher.

I suspect it was paid for. Notably, like the dual elliptic curve, RSA was one of the very few who adopted extended random. meanwhile, because RSA already took NSA money to incorporate a deliberately weakened standard, they were uniquely aware of NSA's program to weaken commercial crypto.

Given how incredibly stupid and naive they would have to be (neither being a good quality in the security and crypto world) to have fallen for a covert weakening at that point (when nobody else did), assuming they prostitute

I can't imagine anything deeper than "balls deep" as i originally assumed the NSA was into RSA. This leaves me dumbfounded I have written the NSA and asked for schematics on how they managed to get past balls deep, how much further they went, and did they get a whole leg in? did they get past the hips? was there a a device similar to the jaws of life employed in the process?

Why? Because the Yanks realized that the European encryption tools are stronger than the American and they wanted people to use their inferior algorithms. That is why. Any self respecting computer Geek knew that all along.

The problem wasn't so much that good tools from American sources were unavailable, they were just subject to onerous restrictions, that made it hard to distribute. So producers of software were stuck either producing an "international" version which was easy to distribute and download, but had restrictive key length limits and a seperate, harder to download version for the US.

So yes, European tools were generally better, because they were not under such restrictions, and worked just fine in or outside the US. A lot of people in the US even used pgp "international" version just because it was easier.

It really was little more than a lame attempt to stuff a genie back in a bottle; after the bottom was smashed off. The ONLY thing it served to do was make the US into a laughing stock.

So yes, European tools were generally better, because they were not under such restrictions...

Yes, they are better than the crippled exportable versions, but you still don't know if they've been compromised. You are speculating. Unless you have some kind of security clearance, you don't know as a fact if all publicly available encryption doesn't have a built in backdoor, as future documents might indicate. The tin hatters are looking a little less crazy every day as their suspicions become vindicated.

You are correct but I don't see how that is relevant. Yes, just about any software you choose to use COULD be backdoored. In fact, even having the source doesn't protect you from clever attacks that are well hidden.

The point remains, which is the point that was being made, and you responded to, that these international versions which were crippled actually made use of algorithms and key lengths that were already too weak to be recommended. THAT was the direct result of regulation, and the ONLY thing it was

Re how do you know this.
Think back to how many firms had total control over emerging telco standards and the UK and US gov deep interest in emerging export/domestic standards crypto - Clipper, Public Key Cryptography. Key Recovery and the few very public legal cases.
Then nothing, you could just have it all...
Then Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) ensured US crypto law enforcement hardware access as a world wide standard as to not hurt US telco exports.
Then nothing, you could hav

America today is NOT the country my ancestors fled Eastern Europe for nor is it the country my wife and I grew up in. America is now a country run for the benefit of the wealthy, the privileged and the corporations. The CIA, NSA, FBI, DEA, etc. now exist to keep the powerful in charge and to detect and eliminate any movement that will challenge the status quo. Google "Green is the new Red"

I know I'm in the minority on this one, but I really don't see a problem with this. People voluntarily hand over every detail of their personal lives to Facebook, Apple and Google every single day. Why are they shocked that the NSA uses this same data for tracking? I'd be a lot more worried about private companies having access to data.

Because the people using these algorithoms arn't the ones handing out all of their information and often the information isn't theirs to hand out, for example medical institutes use them to store your information they need it you need them to have it but it is not suposed to be public or shared knowledge.

Additionally just because many people do throw all of their info at facebbok and google does not mean everyone does or that anyone should. I for example use encryption wherever possible, I use pgp to sign n

As for being woried more about the corps than government why? Can corperations arrest and imprison you? If not then you really have screwed up threat assesment abilities.

This is kind of what I was getting at -- among those more concerned about privacy, everything is part of a vast government conspiracy, and they're lurking behind the next corner just waiting to imprison and torture you. I think the reality is a little different -- the US has become way too diverse even in the last 50 years to allow any one

I can understand your feelings and I don't completely disagree with them either. However I think the issue is that many if not most people have a line they draw where everything beyond it is personal and private and they do not willingly share this information with people unless it's family or very close friends. There have been suicides over people being "outed" for their sexual preference or other intensely personal things. This is bad enough in the hands of normal bullies, but in the hands of governme